you are what you eat
by CaliforniaStop
Summary: What if Slackjaw had gifted the Pendleton twins to Granny Rags instead of having them enslaved in their own mines? Written for Dishonored Halloween on Tumblr, inspired by Dishonored fan art by viaestelar on Tumblr. Warnings inside.


_**A/N: **__Contains horror, gore, body horror, cannibalism, general Pendletwins weirdness. All the good stuff._

_Also published on my Tumblr and AO3 accounts._

* * *

The City Watchmen are easily dealt with. There are only a handful of them milling around the back entrance of the Golden Cat, and Slackjaw brings with him at least a dozen Bottle Street boys. They loot the bodies, toss them into the river, and wait. It isn't long before the Pendleton twins slink out of the door. They're dressed well – probably on their way to Parliament.

"Where the bloody hell are the guards?" asks one.

"Silas? Where are you, you blighted idiot?" calls the other. "I swear, if he's snuck off with one of the whores…"

"He ain't here," Slackjaw purrs, stepping into view. Behind him, several thugs grin with blackened teeth.

The Pendleton twins, for all the stories about them, go down without much of a fight. They're unarmed, though one of them makes do with his fists well enough. The Bottle Street gang never show up anywhere unprepared, though, and a few drawn knives – some rusty, some serrated – make the whole thing go a lot smoother.

Slackjaw has them stripped of their fine frockcoats. He goes to one – the one who didn't fight back – and begins to untie the cravat looped neatly at his throat.

"If- if this is a robbery," the twin says, speaking delicately around his busted lip, "just- just take what you want and leave us alone!"

Slackjaw easily fits the cravat around his own throat and puffs it out. The silk alone is probably worth several hundred coin; the bejewelled pin that glitters there could probably _buy_ the bath house. He takes the twin's hand by the wrist – nudging away the thick fingers of the thug who has his arms wrenched behind his back – and holds it up for inspection. The nails are neatly manicured, the skin soft and smooth and pale.

"These hands haven't seen a day's work," Slackjaw remarks, clucking his tongue. "I reckon it's about time you both earned your keep."

The twins are bound at the wrists and gagged. They twist and choke out muffled sounds of protest as they are forced to march through the winding lane that leads from the bath house back to the Distillery District. While they walk, Slackjaw makes a show of running the pad of his thumb along the edge of his knife.

There is a shuffling sound, and something clattering, and the thugs freeze in their tracks.

Slackjaw cocks his head, jaw working beneath his beard.

Then a thin, reedy voice echoes in the lane: "Granny, Granny, Granny. _Graaaaaanny, Granny, Granny_."

"Aw shit," one of the thugs spits, "it's that _witch_!"

The twins begin to writhe in earnest.

"She's harmless," Slackjaw says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Last time we saw her, she set those rats on us!"

"I ain't goin' anywhere _near_ Granny Rags."

"Yeah, Slackjaw. She's scares the shit out of me."

"What? You're scared of a blind li'l old lady?" Slackjaw huffs. He studies the Bottle Street boys, and then the Pendleton twins. Their eyes are wide, nostrils flaring as they gasp around the gags. Slackjaw chuckles. "You fellas ever met Granny Rags?"

The twins exchange a glance, then slowly shake their heads.

"She's quite a character. A witch, some say. My boys don't like her and she don't like them." He hums and lifts the gold fob watch and chain from the waistcoat of one of the twins. It glitters, and he pockets the trinket. "Our territories overlap, though, so there's no avoidin' her. Maybe," he says slowly, lifting a suggestive brow, "I could smooth things over with her if I give her a coupla new toys to play with, huh?"

They shake their heads more frantically.

"Yeah," Slackjaw continues, grinning, "I reckon that's what I'll do. Truss you two up like presents and leave ya on her doorstep. She'll like that. And you ain't gonna be a bother to nobody ever again."

The twins scream around their gags, and are each swiftly silenced by a heavy blow to the head.

* * *

Morgan and Custis regain consciousness at the same time. They blink, groggily, through a haze of pain and confusion, and then meet each other's eyes. They are not gagged, which surprises them, but the bitter taste of whatever the thugs had stuffed in their mouths still lingers.

"Where are we?" Morgan asks, voice raspy.

"I don't know," Custis returns, equally raspy. He tries to push himself up into a sitting position, but it's hard because his wrists are tied behind his back. His ankles are bound too, he notices. Morgan is in the same predicament, grunting and straining against his bonds with bared teeth.

Custis chooses to examine their surroundings. They're in a dark room, on rough bare floorboards that bite into their silken hose and shirts. Across the room, faint yellow light spills in a narrow strip across the floor. There is a window, too, but it's boarded up. The air reeks of the bitter tang of blood, rotting food, sweat, mould, damp, and a dozen other things that make Custis' stomach twitch and heave.

Something warm and furry brushes past his leg with a squeak, and he jolts backwards, eyes wide. "Oh _fuck_," he gasps.

"What?" Morgan grunts, still trying desperately to work himself out of his bonds.

"A- a fucking _rat_," Custis stammers. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears, can feel his throat tightening in panic, can feel how the blood has drained out of his cheeks. He draws his knees to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible.

"Did it bite you?"

"N-no," Custis exhales, suddenly relieved. He closes his eyes and suppresses a shudder. "Just _touched_ me."

Across the room, a door opens, and faint yellow light washes into the darkness, illuminating odd shapes draped under moth-eaten sheets. It looks like they're in someone's bedroom, though everything is cobwebs and dust. Custis is certain he can see a rat's nest in the corner. He shivers.

"Oh my little birdies, you want to see Granny's new friends don't you?" croons a crackly voice.

Custis recognizes it as the voice from the lane that frightened all the Bottle Street thugs. He shifts closer to Morgan; their backs press against one another, fingers instinctively lacing together. They hold their breath and stay very still, as though to better hide themselves.

Granny Rags enters the room. She is slightly hunched, with bone-white hair swept off her face and pinned with an expensive-looking clip. Her clothes were once fine, but are now discoloured and tattered. Her fingers are long and claw-like, ending in jagged yellow nails. At her feet, a pack of rats – grey and black and white, fat, with beady eyes that glitter – swarm and squeak. It's hard to tell how many they are; they are just a writhing mass of fur distinguished only by their little feet clicking on the floorboards and the light thump of their thin tails.

Custis squeezes Morgan's knuckles with his own.

"Are my new friends in here?" Granny sings, turning her face this way and that. Her eyes are milky and unseeing, but Custis is certain that he can feel them pin him down. "My little birdies can smell you, you know," the old woman warns. "You can't hide from Granny."

Morgan tenses as the rats squeak and begin to move, en masse, towards them. They point their noses in the air and sniff and swarm closer to the twins. Custis squeezes his eyes shut and draws his knees as close as he can to his chest. Something moves over his foot and his heart seizes.

The rats begin to squeak loudly, as though alerting Granny Rags to their find. They swarm around the twins' feet, sniffing at their shoes and taking experimental nibbles out of their hose. One of them crawls into Morgan's lap and begins to burrow into his waistcoat. The warmth of their little bodies and the fetid stench of their fur are overpowering and frightening and nightmarish.

"Oh, _there_ you are," she sighs, and she moves with quick, delicate steps to where the twins are. Up close, she reeks of decay and there is a strange crackly sound that bursts in her throat with every breath. She bends down, grabs a rat by the matted scruff of its neck, and makes kissing noises at it. "Aren't my little birdies _wonderful_?"

Custis is close to panicking. There is a rat tugging on his ankle and he can feel its teeth, sharp and hot, threatening to pierce his skin. He grabs more desperately at Morgan, turns his head to his brother and takes comfort in the closeness of that identical face. In the dim light, Morgan's eyes are wide and shining, and his lips are a thin, bloodless line.

The rat in his lap crawls along his leg and rests on his knee.

Granny Rags reaches out with a bony hand and touches each of the twins on the head. "When those nasty thugs knocked on my door I didn't know _what_ they wanted," she says, bending down and trailing her fingers over their cheeks, as though inspecting them.

Both Morgan and Custis flinch and wince as she touches them. Custis' throat is too tight to speak, though he does whimper as those cold, thin fingers brush his skin. Even Morgan seems too horrified to bark at Granny to keep her hands to herself.

"The last time they knocked on my door, they _harassed _me and my poor little birdies. But Slackjaw promised me he only wanted to deliver me a gift, as a sign of good will," Granny continues. "So when he put you two at my feet, I thanked him and told him I was sorry for cutting out the hearts of the last two gentlemen who bothered me.

"Still, they were _tasty_."

The rats, still swarming around the Pendleton twins, give off high-pitched squeaks of agreement.

* * *

Granny Rags keeps the Pendleton twins chained up on opposite sides of a large, dusty room. Rat lamps cast faint light on the beaten floorboards but do little to stave off the furry swarm that writhes and squeaks in response to the old woman's cooing.

From what Custis can tell, they're in an apartment building. Sometimes he can hear Granny's footsteps above his head as she potters around doing this or that. He wonders where they are exactly. There are no windows so he can't see surrounding buildings, but sometimes he hears the distant blaring of the Lord Regent's propaganda speakers. Sometimes the faint scent of seawater hits his nostrils and he wonders if they're close to the harbor.

Just once, an announcement is made about him and Morgan; a substantial reward is on offer for information pertaining to their whereabouts.

He tries to tempt Granny Rags with this, but she brushes off promises of pouchfuls of coin with a wave of her bony hand. "Granny doesn't need money, does she, dearies? No, that handsome black-eyed fellow provides well enough for me – though I'm beginning to wonder if he's ever going to get serious about me…" she purrs, the heels of her boots clacking on the floor as she paces from Custis to Morgan.

She inspects them, lifting their chins in her hand and leering down at them with her unseeing eyes. Her fingers brush over their cheeks, their lips, their noses, their foreheads.

"So _overbred_," she remarks, clucking her tongue disapprovingly.

"Fuck off, you withered old cunt," Morgan hisses, knocking her hand away and jumping to his feet. There is a manacle on his ankle, and a manacle on his wrist, and the chains that keep him tethered to two rusty hooks on the wall rattle as he moves. He stalks towards Granny but then the rats swarm around her, forming a writhing, protective wall of fetid fur and gnashing teeth. He freezes, eyes widening in horror.

Granny clucks her tongue, a wicked little smile curling her thin lips. "This boy is so _mean_, isn't he, my little birdies?"

The rats squeak and natter.

"I don't like mean," she intones darkly.

Custis wishes he had the strength to stand. With the old woman's attention focused on Morgan, he might be able to get behind her and maybe strangle her with the chain that hangs from his wrist.

But all he can do is press himself against the wall and hug his knees and tremble. He's utterly terrified.

When Granny leaves them alone, they stare at one another from across the room. They don't dare talk, just in case their voices draw the rats or Granny or something far more sinister that lingers in the rotten apartment building, but they've cultivated the skill of speaking to one another without words.

Once, Custis crawls towards his brother, needing to be close to him, needing to smell his familiar scent amongst the rat shit and rotting food, needing to hear the familiar pace of his breathing over the groaning of water pipes and the ominous singing of Granny. Morgan, in turn, crawls towards Custis. Their bonds, however, are not long enough. They come to the centre of the room, one arm outstretched towards the other, but there is one last, unbearable inch between their hands.

Custis sobs in frustration.

When Morgan sleeps, Custis watches him. He doesn't understand how his brother can make himself so vulnerable, but somehow he manages. Custis can't sleep. He _refuses_ to sleep. He needs to stay awake, to listen and watch and be alert. The fatigue makes him crazy. He hits himself when he begins to nod off, and the slap of skin on skin jolts Morgan awake and then they stare at one another, two pairs of identical dark eyes, until Morgan's chin drops to his chest and he slumps onto his side.

Custis crawls towards his brother and lies down as closely as he can manage. As closely as the chains allow. He reaches out as far as he can – until his elbow pops and his shoulder groans in protest – and his fingers curl in the empty air where he wants that warm cheek to be.

* * *

Custis falls asleep when the fatigue becomes crippling and he begins to hallucinate rats – or maybe they're actually in the room, watching him with their beady little eyes. When he wakes, it's with panic flooding his veins. He pushes himself up from the floor, ignores the surge of dizziness that accompanies the sudden change in position, and looks across the room–

But Morgan is gone.

The manacles that held him are empty. There is no sign that he was even _there_. No scrap of finely-tailored silk, no shoe, no blood from where he fought back against whatever took him away. Nothing.

Custis shakes his head, rubs his knuckles against his eyes until bright colors explode behind his eyelids.

But Morgan is still gone.

Tears come unbidden to his eyes, hot and blinding. He curls a fist on the floor, fingernails scraping against the rough wood. He clenches his jaw so tightly that his molars groan, and then he lets out a single, strangled cry. He is alone, and it hurts him, a sharp visceral pain that makes him hunch and hug himself and sob.

There are rats in their large nest in the corner of the room. They squeak and scrabble and swarm towards him, as though drawn to the unbearable pain gripping him from head to toe. He moans loudly, and barely has the sense to push himself back against the wall before the rats begin to nibble at him.

Their teeth tear into his hose, pull on the leather of his shoes. He kicks out, weakly, as his crying becomes louder, unchecked. He kicks out again and crushes the bloated ribcage of a rat beneath his heel. Thick visceral globules and a red spray of blood shoot out of the creature's mouth. The other rats immediately devour their dead comrade.

Custis claps his hands over his ears to try and block out the wet tear of flesh from bones, the feverish squeaking of the feeding rats, the desperate scratch and click of their little feet on the floor as they climb over one another for a single mouthful of meat. He wails, loudly, drawing his knees to his chest, and turns his cheek to the wall. It's cool and solid and mildly more reassuring than anything else in the room.

Eventually, the frenzy stops and the rats, sated, swarm away, leaving no sign of the dead rat save for a smear of red and black that has seeped right into the floorboards.

Custis tells himself that if the rats _had_ eaten Morgan, he would have heard them.

* * *

"Where is my brother?"

Granny Rags doesn't acknowledge the question.

"Where," Custis demands again, his voice hoarse and raw, "is my brother?"

He's completely lost track of time. How long has he been chained up inside this dank apartment? A few hours? A few days? A few weeks? Longer? He is weak and when he scrubs at his jaw, stubble scratches at his palm. He feels thin; the cuffs of his shirt hang limply on his wrists but whether it's just his own imagination playing tricks on him or he really has grown that thin, he doesn't know.

Granny hasn't fed him – hasn't fed _them_ – since they arrived, but he is damned if he'll beg the old witch for food. He doesn't even want to think on what sorts of things she'll feed him: skewered rats, and jellied fish that have been rotting in tins, and fruit that has grown withered and now pulses with the larvae of flies.

"He was such a _mean_ little boy," Granny tuts. Her narrows shoulders heave with a dramatic sigh. "Such a mean little boy. I had to teach the poor dear a lesson, didn't I?"

The words are like a knife in his ribcage, sharp and cold and sudden. He forgets how to breathe for a moment and as he feels darkness beginning to eat at the corners of his vision, he wills himself to pass out. If he passes out, maybe he'll wake up in bed, with Morgan just over there, and he'll laugh because it – _everything_ – the rats, the witch, the thugs, the chains – was just a nightmare.

Granny comes over to him, bearing a little tray in her bony hands. She sets it down before him with a proud smile.

Custis turns his eyes over the tray. There are a few slices of crusty bread, a chipped bowl filled with murky soup, and a grimy glass filled with something clear – water, maybe, or spirits. The food isn't the most appetizing meal that's ever been put before him, and on principle he refuses to take anything the blind woman has to offer him.

He refuses to eat unless he and Morgan eat _together_. He tells Granny this, and she sighs and shakes her head. "So ungrateful," she mutters, and she slinks away, chirping to her 'birdies'.

Custis nudges the tray away with the toe of his shoe. He ignores the gnawing pains of hunger that turn his stomach into a tight coil and he ignores the way he's started to salivate and he ignores just how damn good the food smells over the stench of rat shit and sour sweat. He ignores all of these things because he refuses to eat unless he and Morgan eat _together_.

Eventually, the rats help themselves to the food and he is relieved that the temptation is gone.

* * *

Granny tries to feed him again. This time, there is a small pie set on a delicate little plate – she's even put a yellowed doily on the tray, as if to make the meal a little more enticing. He stares at the pie, with its flaky crust and its strange, spiced scent. Where did it come from? Did Granny make it? He hasn't seen any of the apartment building save for the room where he is chained up, but if the rest of it is as rundown as he assumes it is, surely there aren't any cooking facilities. Surely there isn't a stove or an oven. Surely there isn't an icebox filled with fresh ingredients. So where did the pie come from?

In a fit of anger – some of it directed at Granny, some of it directed at himself, and some of it just _there_, aimless but white-hot – he hurls the pie across the room. It hits the wall with a wet squelch, and the crust breaks apart. Dark, glistening filling oozes down the wall and hits the floor with a thump. It draws out the rats, who feast with gleeful little squeaks.

Custis' lips twist in displeasure; he drains the glass of bitter wine that Granny has provided for him. His stomach churns and groans. He weeps, quietly, and licks away the tears that hit the corner of his mouth. He relishes the tang of salt on his skin. It is some reminder, however twisted or hollow, that he still exists and that he is still alive.

The third time the blind old witch feeds him, he's beyond hungry. She barely sets the tray of food down – thick, pink sausages that are a little undercooked and that leave a faint sheen of blood on the dirty porcelain plate – before he lunges for it. He rips into the meat. The sausages are warm and greasy and he doesn't even _care_ what they're made of.

He eats every single one and washes them down with two glasses of bitter wine, which Granny gladly provides.

Sated, a little dizzy, he leans back against the wall and skims his tongue along his teeth, trying to catch any bits of meat that have lodged themselves in the grooves and ridges of his mouth. Granny, watching him, claps her thin hands together.

"Oh _good boy_," she croons as she picks up the tray.

Custis doesn't even bother thinking about how she can see with those milky eyes.

"You ate every last bite," the old witch continues, smiling sweetly at him with blackened teeth. "Tomorrow, Granny is going to give you a nice present."

He regards her with half-lidded eyes. The manacles suddenly feel very heavy on his wrist and ankle. Maybe it's just the wine. He nods at her, limply, and then closes his eyes and slumps onto his side. Sleep comes easily to him and in the hazy twilight between consciousness and blackness, he feels how the rats nestle against him, warm and mangy.

He doesn't even care.

* * *

When Custis wakes again, his nostrils are filled with the putrid stench of the rats. They are still nestled against his body, warm and gently quivering. A hissed curse slips out through his teeth, and he sweeps the rats away with his arm. They skitter and squeak and race to their large nest in the corner.

Trembling, he brushes down his clothing as though to brush away their scent, their warmth, the stray hairs they've left on him.

And then he realizes that his wrist is unmanacled.

The cuff has left a raw band on his skin, and he rubs at it with delicate fingers. His ankle, too, is unmanacled. Slowly, he stands. His legs begin to shake, knees threatening to buckle. He has to lean against the wall for support. The exertion, though small, has his heart beating wildly in his chest. He draws a steadying breath through his nose then moves towards the door.

It opens onto a narrow hallway that is crowded with old, broken furniture. The ascending staircase is blocked off by a sofa draped under a moth-eaten sheet and riddled with holes where the rats have nibbled at the upholstery, so he decides to move downstairs.

He is slow and cautious with each step. He listens for Granny Rags, or for the tell-tale squeaking of the rats, but he is alone in the stairwell. He hits the landing and peers into the nearest doorway. There is a balcony on the other side of the room, and the doors are open. For a moment Custis wonders if he'll be able to drop down from the balcony and into the street, but as he crosses the room, the balcony doors slam shut and he is enveloped in darkness.

Panic eats at him as he rapidly backpedals towards the open doorway. When he returns to the stairwell, he falls onto his knees and breathes heavily and slowly. He feels dizzy, faint, and has to remind himself that as long as he is free, as long as he is able to move around, he'll be able to find Morgan and they'll _both_ be able to escape.

He descends to the bottom of the staircase. To his left is a door, but he vehemently ignores any desires to just _run_ because he needs to find Morgan; so, he turns right and picks his way through a narrow corridor that opens up into a rather large kitchen. Lanterns balance on cupboards, on the rusty faucet of the sink. There are a handful of them on the floor, illuminating where the floorboards are uneven.

At the back of the kitchen is another door, slightly ajar, through which he can hear Granny Rags singing.

Custis decides to find a knife. He moves to one of the long tables pressed against the wall and peers at the mess of plates and bowls and glasses. There is a large pot and inside is soup, congealed and ice cold and reeking of rot.

Gagging, eyes watering, he clamps a hand over his nose and continues to search for a knife with which to slit the old witch's wrinkled throat.

On another counter, cuts of meat are laid out, as though she was just in the middle of preparing a meal. He dares to examine the meat more closely. Some of it is fresh, oozing blood; other slices are older, stiffer, rubbery. There are clumps of dark, glistening _something_, maybe entrails. Flies crawl all over everything, and maggots writhe in white shining clusters.

That does it: he pitches forward and vomits, elbows braced on his knees. He gags and chokes and shudders as he brings up what feels like more than his stomach can contain. He cries with the bitter taste of acid at the back of his mouth and the revolting sensation of _things_ being forced through his chest, up his throat, out through raw lips, and the wet, heavy splash of his vomit on the floor and on his shoes.

When he's certain he's done, when his gagging turns to dry-retching and he physically cannot bring up anything else, he straightens up and blinks through his tears. He feels a little better for having vomited, a little more clear-headed. He swipes a shaking hand over his lips and tries not to look at the messy pool at his feet.

But he can't help it.

Terror and panic and utter _horror_ grip him as he stares at the pool of vomit. There are distinctive shapes tossed in amongst the mess of half-digested chunks and glistening stomach secretions.

An ear.

A finger, a glittering signet ring still firmly secured around its base.

Two or three toes or varying sizes.

Custis collapses, howling, vision darkening. He doesn't remember eating anything like that; _he doesn't remember eating an ear or a finger or toes_. And yet there they are, having just been violently ejected from his stomach. He retches anew, eyes rolling, but nothing more comes up. Everything is lying there in the stinking hot mess.

His howling soon turns to sobbing as he realizes that he recognizes the signet ring for Morgan's. His own fingers sift through the vomit and he picks up the severed digit and studies it in the lamplight. The skin is surprisingly full and smooth. There is only slight wrinkling and discoloration where it has been cut, cleanly, just above the knuckle.

With only a little encouragement, the fingernail – neatly filed – tears easily from the nail bed.

Sweating, everything becoming blurry, he drops the finger and the nail. He probes his own mouth, as though to find more of Morgan inside him, but there is nothing. Just his own coated tongue, his teeth, the ridges at the back of his throat.

"Morgan!" he calls, slurring just a little bit. "_Morgan!_"

He staggers to his feet and moves to the slightly-ajar door. He shoulders it open and pitches forward again, landing on his knees with a sickening crunch. His thoughts turn to all that Granny prepared for him. He didn't eat most of it, but what he _did_ eat… _was it Morgan?_

He thinks on the fat pink sausages that he so readily devoured, and he shrieks. His fingers dig into the rumpled fabric of his waistcoat, as though he can rip out any remnants of those sausages lingering inside him.

"Morgan!" he calls again, voice high and thin.

Granny Rags is a witch. This has got to be a trick, black magic. She wouldn't actually _kill_ Morgan and _feed_ him to Custis. She wouldn't. _She wouldn't_.

He repeats this to himself as he gets to his feet and staggers down a narrow, winding path. Around him, brick buildings tower and close in. There is a grey sliver of sky above him and the scent of rain is in the air. Brilliant violet light leads him along the path, through a tiny unkempt garden. Rats watch him from the overgrown bushes, their beady eyes alert, their noses pointed in his direction as though tracking his scent.

The path ends at a shrine, adorned with heavy drapes of elaborate purple velvet. There are several bone ornaments on display, some of them smeared with what looks like blood. Small lamps that give off the brilliant violet light are nestled at the foot of the shrine, casting everything in strange shadows.

Just to the side of the shrine, Granny Rags stands over what looks like a bath tub, and inside is a body.

Custis drags his hands down his face as his legs carry him – unwillingly, mechanically – to the tub. He blinks rapidly through the tears that pool on his eyelids, breathes heavily through the chants of _no, no, no, no, oh no, please no, not Morgan_–

When he reaches the tub, he is transfixed by the body that lies in a shallow pool of blood and bodily fluids and water. Its limbs are splayed awkwardly, draped over the smooth lip of the tub. One of the legs is uncovered, the fine silken hose having been stripped away, and the foot (or what is left of it) is bare. The toes have all been cut off, leaving congealed stumps. The calf has had strips of muscle and tendon cut out of it.

Maggots writhe in the empty folds of skin.

Custis' eyes next fall on the arm nearest to him. It has been severed at the elbow, and tattered rags of fine silken shirt hang, limply, over the remnant of the joint. The other arm – the right arm, he notes, distantly – is intact, save for the hand, which is missing.

Granny Rags, speaking to him in that crooning voice of hers, though he doesn't understand her, reaches into the body's chest cavity (the shirt and waistcoat are still on, merely unbuttoned and pulled open) and begins to prod and poke at what organs remain. The ribcage has been cleanly broken at the sternum and both halves of the curved bony confines have been swung open, like a set of double doors. Some of the ribs are broken off, missing. Some of the ribs have had strange shapes etched in to them, crudely, as though done by Granny's own fingernails.

Inside the chest, everything is a dark, congealed mess. Some things remain (the lungs, most of the intestines, which are pale and hang out of the abdomen, as though Granny was going to pull them out and then decided against it) but other things (the heart, the liver) are gone. The gaping holes they leave are large, too large. They threaten to swallow Custis whole.

The stench of the body is unbearable; some liquid from the tub washes into the abdominal cavity, creating a stagnant pool that makes what tissues that remain bloated. Even as Granny pokes and prods, entire chunks of skin and organ come away easily, dislodged by soaking in the water for so long. They float, bobbing serenely in the shallow pool, until she plucks them out of the tub and tosses them on the ground for the rats.

They feast loudly.

Custis studies the head last. He wants to put it off – he can't bring himself to actually see those identical features, to _confirm_ that it is Morgan lying in the tub, dead and dismembered – but he is horrifically drawn to the head. The first thing he notes is its color. The skin is grey, purple closer to the jaw and throat. He notes the bloody hole where the ear – the ear that he vomited up in the kitchen – used to be.

Almost immediately, he recognizes Morgan's high, pale forehead and the curve of his nose and the dark hair parted neatly on the side. Even in death, those features remain identical to his. What is not identical is the way Morgan's tongue, swollen and pale, sticks out through thin, grey lips. What is not identical are the eye sockets, which are nothing but dark, glistening holes where the eyes have been gouged out, leaving thick, pink threads draped over Morgan's sallow cheeks.

Granny reaches up to open Morgan's mouth. Her fingers claw tightly over his jaw and fist in his hair as she arches his neck back. Clumps of hair tear from his scalp, and she drops these to the ground with much tutting. She prods and pulls at his swollen tongue and then, with more strength than she rightly has, she rips the tongue right out of Morgan's mouth. It tears away from the back of his throat with a sickening sound, and a spray of something – blood maybe, or residual saliva, or bile – arcs into the air.

Morgan's tongue, ripped straight from the root, is surprisingly long.

She holds it up as though inspecting it. "Dearie, you haven't lived until you've had tongue cooked by me," she says.

Custis can feel his stomach heaving again. He wants to pass out, to fall into blackness, but his body is surprisingly resilient. He manages to remain standing. His eyes sweep across Morgan's body once more. A dribble of something dark now oozes from the corner of his mouth; his neck is arched, head thrown back against the lip of the tub. Custis reaches out to touch his cheek, which is cold and rubbery. He then touches his own cheek, which is warm and rough with stubble.

"Oh! I almost forgot! Your present, for being _such_ a good boy and eating all the sausages I made for you," Granny continues. Tongue flopping between her fingers, she moves to the shrine. When she returns to the tub, she holds out Morgan's right hand, which is in surprisingly good condition. All the fingers are intact and the cut at the wrist is clean. "Look, dearie, Granny _knows_. Out of everything from your brother, his right hand means the most to you, doesn't it?" she purrs.

Custis stares at the proffered appendage. Everything is reduced to the rush of blood in his ears and the swimming of his vision. His left hand begins to itch, and he works his fingers against his palm twitchily. He _almost_ asks how the old witch knows that Morgan's right hand was joined to his in the womb, that it was Morgan's right hand that he always sought for comfort, that he always hoped he and Morgan would die together, his left hand holding Morgan's right, leaving life as they entered it – but he doesn't ask because he realizes, then, that _of course_Granny knows. She's a witch! She knows everything!

He takes Morgan's hand and stares at it. The fingers are slightly stiff, slightly curled. Slowly, panting through parted lips, he lines Morgan's right hand up with his left one. The whorls on their fingers and the lines of their palms fit together perfectly, even in death.

Custis feels something break inside him, then.

He collapses to the ground, sobbing and laughing and screaming all at once. Tears, hot, run down his face. He rolls onto his side, curling up as tightly as he can, and then flops onto his back. His legs kick as he howls and cries and cackles. That last little bit of hope he had that he and Morgan would escape leaves him, and he is left with a strange euphoria. _Relief_ or _resignation_ or some combination of both.

He clutches Morgan's right hand to his chest and thinks about how he vomited up parts of Morgan's body and wonders how Morgan's tongue will taste after Granny cooks it for him.

"Let Granny help you, dearie," she croons. "I know _just_ how to fix you."

* * *

She sews their hands together. Custis barely feels the sting of the needle as it bites into his skin, barely feels the drag of the thread as it pulls through the hole, joining his hand and Morgan's. He feels drunk, or high, or maybe both. He watches Granny work, and doesn't even balk at how he's letting a blind old woman sew his hand to his brother's.

"Tighter," he demands, pressing his palm flush to Morgan's in demonstration. "I don't want any space between us."

She hums, mostly to herself, as she works. She is very deft with a needle and thread, and soon the project is complete. She snips at the thread with her teeth and ties a neat knot, and tells Custis to admire her work.

He does so: he and Morgan are joined at the wrist, along the sides of their palms, and at their fingertips. Granny even sewed a tight loop that joins the thin skin between their fingers. The thread zigzags cleanly through their skin – Morgan's slightly drier than Custis' – and feels incredibly secure. The security makes Custis sigh. Now, he and Morgan are together again.

"Thank you," he breathes, and he cradles his left hand – now much heavier with the addition of Morgan's – against his chest. His heartbeat bounces off the joined appendages and he takes great comfort in Granny's thoughtfulness.

"I'd like that tongue now," he adds.

She wags an admonishing finger at him. "My, my, so impatient, aren't we?"

He can feel himself falling and he closes his eyes. "Yes," he replies, grinning crookedly at the old witch. "I'm _hungry_, Granny."

She strokes the top of his head and leaves to prepare Morgan's tongue.

Custis curls up on his side and giggles, manically, to himself. The rats are drawn to him, and he lets them nestle against his body.

* * *

He readily devours the tongue that Granny Rags puts on a plate for him. It's near raw, and its smell is questionable, but he doesn't care. It's_Morgan's_, and that's all that matters. The tongue is tough and dense but he relishes the exertion of his jaw.

A long time ago, when they were both very drunk, he kissed Morgan. Sitting on the floor of the derelict apartment building with the rats watching him rip into the long strip of muscle, a moan rises in his throat. He recalls how warm and slippery Morgan's tongue had felt against his, how the faint bumps on Morgan's tongue seemed to match his own, how easily Morgan's tongue twisted and curled and probed in his mouth. He recalls how greedily he kissed his brother. He recalls how it felt like Morgan wanted to devour _him_, how readily he _wanted_ to be devoured by Morgan.

When he is finished, having left nothing on his plate save for a small pool of pale, grey juice where the tongue laid, he moves to the bed. It is hard and lumpy and musty-smelling, but much more comfortable than the floor. Some of the rats have burrowed into the pillows but they scamper away when they feel his weight on the mattress.

He rolls onto his side and raises his left hand – the hand sewn to Morgan's right – to his eyes. He studies how Morgan's skin has withered, turned grey. The nails are long. He rips out each one and tosses them, blindly, to the floor.

He listens as the rats swarm at the promise of something to eat. He doesn't bother checking whether or not they consume Morgan's fingernails. It doesn't matter.

It isn't long before his left hand becomes red and puffy and sore, and the sites where the thread enters and exits his skin ooze bright yellow pus. The pain of the infection is unbearable, crippling. At times, it makes him strangely lucid. When he remembers who he is, and where he is, and what he's done, he sobs and begs for Morgan's forgiveness and forces himself to vomit up every last part of his brother that he's eaten.

Once, he rips Morgan's hand from his and hurls it across the room. When the curious rats swarm over it, though, and begin to take bites out of it, he howls and crushes them underfoot and picks up the severed hand. He goes to Granny. "Make us whole again, Granny," he begs, shuffling towards the old witch on her knees.

And she does.

She sews Morgan's hand to his again, much more securely than before. With every pierce of the needle in his skin, pus spurts forth. His skin becomes angry and flaky, his fingers suddenly too swollen to move. It doesn't matter, he tells himself. He doesn't need to move his fingers. They are right where they need to be, lined up and joined to Morgan's.

She feeds him Morgan's cheeks next, cut into tender chunks in a stew. She tells him that Morgan had such _nice_ cheeks – and Custis vehemently agrees – but she needs the poor dear's jaw and didn't want to leave the empty flaps of his cheeks just hanging there.

Swirling the spoon around the bowl, he hums and laughs to himself. Morgan _does_ have such nice cheeks. He lifts a spoonful of stew to his lips, and an eyeball – full and pale and foggy – stares back at him. Slowly, he plucks the eyeball from the spoon, fingers pinching the thick, slimy bundle of nerves that hang like a tail.

It's Morgan's eye, though it's hardly recognizable now.

Custis throws back his head, parts his lips, and drops Morgan's eyeball into his waiting mouth. His teeth clamp down on it. There is only a little resistance. He presses the tip of his tongue against the eyeball, relishing its smooth surface, before it explodes in his mouth. Goopy, salty liquid rushes down his throat, drips from the corners of his mouth. He swallows the deflated sac of Morgan's eye with its thick slimy tail, and then licks at the mess on his lips and chin.

* * *

The infection rages in his body. It has moved from his hand, which is so swollen that it is barely recognizable as a hand, up the length of his arm, and now settles inside his chest. He shakes, uncontrollably, and is feverish. His teeth chatter as cold sweat coats him. He begs Granny for warm soup and she happily obliges.

"I boiled your brother's ribs for this," she explains as she hands him a large bowl of steaming broth. She passes him slices of crusty bread and adds, "And I ground up his bones to make the flour for this."

He eats and eats, until his belly is bloated with Morgan, and then he rests his hand – the hand not joined to Morgan's – on his abdomen and he weeps. He curls up on the floor and cries because he is so weak and so scared, and he just wishes the infection would take him. Anything, even death, would be better than this nightmarish existence.

The rats must know that he is sick, because they have taken to watching him, silently, from across the room. It's as if they're waiting for him to die so they can pick his bones clean. Custis eyes them with a glassy gaze. His skin burns, breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He screams at the rats to leave him alone.

Sometimes, he stands with Granny Rags in the garden and watches her strip Morgan's corpse. There are maggots in almost every orifice now: his mouth – or what is left of it after his lower jaw has been ripped away – and his eye sockets and inside his near-bare abdominal cavity. Granny grasps at his remaining calf and mutters to herself. She tugs on the silken hose, to strip the calf bare, and then pulls at the withered skin of his ankle; the whole thing comes away in one clean sweep, like a second, thicker stocking.

"Have you eaten any of my brother?" Custis demands, his voice a thick, near-unintelligible slur. He is leaning against the rough brick wall, cradling his left hand and Morgan's right hand against his chest. He trembles, violently, from head to toe. There is something bitter gathering at the back of his throat.

"Of course not, dearie!" the old witch replies with a bob of her head. She is busy carving black etchings into Morgan's lower jaw, which is clean and white and smooth in her bony hands. His teeth are all intact, and they shine in the purple lantern light. "He's not _mine_ to eat."

Custis narrows his eyes. "That's right," he hisses. He pushes himself off the wall and staggers towards Morgan's body. The smell of it is overpowering and he chokes and gags before throwing himself down on his knees by the tub and reaching for a fistful of Morgan's dark, brittle hair.

He leans forward just enough to take Morgan's earlobe between his teeth, and then he pulls. The ear comes away cleanly and easily, just like the glove of second skin from his calf. Custis' eyes roll back in his head and he stuffs the ear into his mouth and swallows it whole. He tugs a little too hard on Morgan's scalp, and a handful of hair comes away in his fingers. Blinking through tears, he slumps onto his side.

"I don't feel so good, Granny," he mumbles thickly. He passes out shortly after that.

* * *

The City Watch hears rumors of Weepers living in the derelict apartment building, and they relish clearing out the bloody-eyed shells of humanity. When they break down the front door, a swarm of rats rush out – dozens and dozens of rats that squeak and writhe and charge. The Watchmen don't bother killing the rats; they've seen what happens when large groups of the rodents are attacked, and it _always_ ends well for the rats.

They move into the building. A few of them move upstairs to check the upper levels, and the others move down the narrow corridor to the kitchen at the back. The first thing they notice is the _stench_. It's rotting meat and decay and death and sour sweat and bitter metal, and a hundred other things that make the men gag and choke even through the protective masks that cover their noses and mouths.

The counters in the kitchen are littered with rotted meat that writhes with maggots. There are long bone, some nearly picked clean, near a mortar and pestle. Several large pots are full of thick, congealed soup and stew. In one pot, the broth is so watery that the Watchman who investigates it can clearly see the shape of a foot lingering at the bottom. He curses, loudly, and stumbles backwards, suddenly faint.

They dare to venture out through the door that leads into the cramped garden. Purple light spills over the unkempt bushes and overgrown grass. Rats natter and squeak from their hidden nests. There is soft sobbing and incoherent talking coming from the end of the garden, where a shrine to the Outsider stands, unashamedly.

On the shrine are several bones, bleached and carved with black etchings. Purple light wafts in a diaphanous cloud over the bones, shrouding them.

The Watchmen see the bath tub, next. There are what appear to be the remains of a body there, though it's so disfigured that it's hard to tell. The limbs are gone, leaving ragged stumps. The torso is hollow, empty, and black. Rats have built a small nest there, and squeak and writhe as the Watchmen approach.

The head, or what is left of it, is grey and falling apart. Skin sags, teeth fall out of the gums. There are no eyes, no ears, no lower jaw. The nose looks like it has been partially chewed off. Hunched next to the tub is a figure, and it is he who sobs and speaks. When he hears the Watchmen approach, he leaps up.

His face is drawn and pale, even in the pale lantern light. His hair is long and scraggly, and patches of an untidy beard pepper his jaw and chin. He reeks of shit and sweat and blood. He lunges for the Watchmen and screams, "_Stay away from Morgan! Don't touch him! He's mine!_"

He swings at them, limply, and then they notice that there is a severed hand attached to his.

One of the Watchmen unholsters his pistol and fires. The maniac hits the ground with a muffled thump. He wheezes, softly, as blood leaks from the hot, ragged hole in his chest.

A second shot is fired, into the head, just to be safe.

"Morgan," says one of Watchmen. "As in, Morgan _Pendleton_?"

"I dunno."

"They were never found."

It's hard to tell whether the two men – one whose corpse has been nearly stripped clean and the other who's got a severed hand sewn to his – are, in fact, the Pendleton twins, who have been missing for several weeks.

"Do we- do we inform Lord Pendleton that we may have found his brothers?"

"What, and tell him what _else_ we found here? The foot in the pot? The bones being ground into flour? The shrine to the Outsider?"

The Watchmen who investigated upstairs return, looking as grey as ash. "Rats," one of them wheezes, "rats _everywhere_."

"Any Weepers?"

"N-no…"

The head of the squad makes the executive decision to set the apartment building alight. There is too much – too many body parts, too many rats – to clear out. The building burns quickly and easily; the screams of the rats are loud, but are quickly swallowed up by the snapping and crackling of the flames.

When he to the barracks to file his report, he says that there were no Weepers found. He also omits details of the corpse in the bath tub and the crazed Custis Pendleton and the body parts in the kitchen.

Eventually, quietly, the search for the Pendleton twins is abandoned.


End file.
